New sod, snow at Lambeau

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, January 9, 1997

GREEN BAY, Wis. - The job of laying 500 tons of new sod at Lambeau Field went on Thursday despite driving snow, as the Packers prepared for Sunday's NFC championship game.

About an inch of snow had accumulated by mid-morning and 2-5 inches was forecast by Thursday night.

But Reggie Roberts, the NFC director of information, said workers were about half done at mid-morning and the plan was to complete the job by early evening. He said the snow was not a problem.

The first one-ton rolls of new Kentucky bluegrass went down Wednesday, laid by machines that crawled up and down the barren dirt as workers fitted the mats in place like chunks of carpet.

"Almost what we are doing is taking bricks and laying them in there. That is how heavy it is," said Chip Toma, a field consultant for the NFL who is overseeing the project with Lambeau's field supervisor Todd Edlebeck.

The grass is being hauled to Green Bay from a farm in Maryland in 30 trucks heated to about 40 degrees. The first four trucks were emptied by late Wednesday afternoon.

The field became a quagmire during a rainstorm Saturday in the Packers' 35-14 victory over San Francisco.

The decision was made to completely re-sod the field for Sunday's game against Carolina.

Toma said that, once in place, the $150,000 worth of new grass would be in midseason form.

"If you go out there and you close your eyes and just kind of walk down it, you don't know if you have been on a field laid this afternoon or laid last spring," he said. "It is just that firm."

Three times, in 1988, 1992 and 1994, fields in either Chicago or San Francisco were re-sodded for divisional championship games, he said.

The Packers are giving the old torn-up sod to four charities so they can use it for fund-raising sales to fans.

The team said 25-square-inch chunks of the old turf will be sold for $10 each as a "piece of the frozen tundra from Lambeau Field."

An off-duty police officer hired by the team was already on hand Wednesday to keep fans from helping themselves to chunks of turf that formed a massive pile in the parking lot.

Officer Patrick Buckley, who was guarding the pile, said hundreds of disappointed people had been turned away.

"Some got nasty. People are coming from all over town, all over the place, to get it," he said.